Telecommunications lines, within for example, a telephone system or cable TV system, must be protected from high voltages and surge currents that may occur on the lines. Such currents may damage telecommunications equipment to which the lines are coupled. Each telecommunications line comprises a twisted-pair of wires, and in telephone lines, one is for tip and one is for ring. For business users, normally, each twisted-pair of wires is extended into a protector panel or connector block assembly, which is capable of handling a number of lines. A plug-in excess voltage module is utilized at the protector panel to connect each pair of incoming wires to lines leading to the subscribers equipment. The module is used to protect the equipment that is connected to the incoming telecommunications line from high voltages and current surges occurring on the line.
Numerous plug-in excess voltage modules are typically plugged into receptacles within a protector panel. Due to space limitations, protector panels are constructed to occupy a minimal amount of space while servicing a large number of plug-in excess voltage modules. Such a configuration has been acceptable until such wires were required to carry high frequency communications. One standard known as Category 5 is employed to determine if equipment is capable of handling high frequency communications.
A typical telephone line operates at 300 Hz to 3.5 KHz to transmit an analog voice. The trend is to move out of the voice band up to frequencies as high as 30 MHz for digital communication. A difficulty encountered through the use of high frequencies is that of crosstalk. Crosstalk is unwanted signal coupling between two pairs of wires. Typically, crosstalk occurs between wires that are physically close to one another. The strength of the interference or crosstalk is directly proportional to the square of the distance. For example, in a protector panel servicing 50 lines, crosstalk is likely to occur due to the number of wires crowded into the limited space on the protector panel. Therefore, an improved protector panel assembly is needed to effectively transmit data at higher frequencies without interfering crosstalk.